Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (2 page)

The kitten was a Scottish Fold—the kind with the weird folded ears and bug-eyed faces—and it threatened to be the size of a Labrador retriever when it grew up. Mrs. Schindler had pulled the steel-gray fuzzball out of a cat carrier and sat it in Jeff's arms while she heated the soup.
Jeff had looked at the creature, which was both pitifully cute and adorably ugly, and the cat had blinked slowly back. “Mrs. Doc Herbert, I hope you don't mind if I ask you what in the hell this is?”
“It's a cat,” she said, ruthlessly taking over his student efficiency apartment and setting his one pot up on the hotplate to heat up the soup.
She was a squat, mid-sized woman who favored polyester pantsuits worn over wide hips and had short, dyed black hair. She also had really kind, expressive brown eyes. When Jeff had fallen asleep on her couch the night he'd found out about Kevin, he'd woken up covered in a blanket with a box of tissues and two ibuprofen on the coffee table, and a cat purring on his hip with enough force to vibrate the windows. He liked cats. In fact, he liked this one, but, “They're not allowed in this dump,” he had to tell her, a little wistfully. The kitten had taken up a determined purring on his chest, and he found that, although his heart still felt empty, the purring was warming the empty place. Mrs. Doc Herbert had shrugged. “So find another place. Your internship is paid—you're no longer a starving student, and you are almost officially a grown-up. Get a house—”
“I hate yard work.”
She shrugged. “Get a condo with a pool, then. Just make sure it takes pets.”
Jeff looked at the purring thing on his chest again. It seemed like an awfully small deal for which to turn his life upside down. Then he looked around his apartment. Kevin had practically lived here those three months before he'd shipped out. Jeff had kept one of his long-sleeved dress shirts in his closet, and Kevin had slipped a couple of OD green Tshirts in his drawer the day he'd left. They'd taken pictures in that last week, stealing the camera from each other to get candid photos, and finally, one of the two of them, taken from the length of Kev's long arm as they'd lain in bed. Jeff had had the picture developed and framed before Kevin had shipped out and had given Kev a wallet-sized one. The picture—Kev grinning wickedly into the camera, Jeff peeking shyly (a surprise, for Jeff) out at the lens from Kevin's cheek—sat next to his bed.
He didn't want to leave this apartment. Kevin was here. His eyes watered up then, and he wrapped his hands around the kitten in preparation to give it back, and then Mrs. Doc Herbert read his mind and wrapped her fingers around his.
“Baby, you have to find a reason to eat. A reason to wake up and take your meds, and throw up, and take them again. You have to find a reason to go to work, and then go to school, and then go home again. The reasons are out there—and you're tougher than you act, so I know you'll find them. But right now, this is your reason.”
The kitten, feeling the possibility of having to leave, dug in its claws and meowed imperiously. Jeff swallowed and looked apologetically at the little fuzzball. “No offense,” he told it, “but you're not much of a reason.”
The kitten sniffed at him and shrugged, then dug in, as if to say,
“Take it or leave it, asshole. You're the one contemplating annihilation by apathy.” Or maybe that was just his conscience speaking. The gay man's trill was a little bit similar.
Jeff frowned at the creature again. “Please tell me it's a boy,” he said.
Mrs. Schindler rolled her eyes. “Oh please, Jeff. Like I'd even
try
to get a girl in your bed.”
Jeff choke-snorted, and the kitten grumbled—an honest-to-God grumble—and dug in a little deeper with his claws, and Mrs. Schindler served up the matzo ball soup. Before she left, Jeff got the recipe, because sometimes, when the drug “therapy” got too bad, it was the only thing he could keep down.
That was how he made it. Six months after diagnosis, there he was, waiting for a consult with Herbert as his favorite doc did his one day a week at the CARES clinic in midtown Sacramento, and wandering restively around the lobby. There was a big bay window looking out into a not hideous (but not bum-free either) neighborhood at midtown, but the day was gray and cheerless, and Jeff was experiencing a sudden case of the fidgets.
He'd been told to counsel some of his patients with hand or arm problems to take up knitting, and he'd taken it up himself, to see what muscle groups it affected. He found himself missing his knitting—he honestly thought he might become one of those obnoxious gay men who brought their knitting in public, just to keep him from the feeling that the clock was ticking at odd hours of the day with nothing to fill the time. On his third pass around the room with a stop at the water cooler, he found he had company.
It was a kid—barely legal, but pretty. He had a strong jaw, a faintly crooked nose, probably from fights, and dark blond hair, combed smooth and long on either side of his face to that strong jaw. His eyes were mostly light brown, with gold flecks and surprisingly dark lashes. He walked like an alpha dog, all shoulders, and Jeff thought that if he'd met this kid clubbing six or seven years ago, he probably would have gone out in back with him to take it against the wall, because
Jesus
, this kid was a stunner.
And he walked like he owned the world, and that had always turned Jeff's key. The rainbow bracelet around his bony, still-growing wrist was especially attractive.
Jeff shook off that moment of attraction, feeling like a dirty old perv, and looked a little deeper, because as much as he walked like he owned the world, the kid's eyes kept darting, in spite of his best intentions, and he must have swallowed about a thousand times since he'd stood up to keep pace with Jeff in their little trot around the room. Jeff sighed. He liked to think of himself as a selfish bastard, really, but given the kindness he'd gotten—not only from Dr. Schindler, but from the entire staff of the VA hospital, who had accepted him like he hadn't been a charity case of everybody's favorite doc—he sort of felt like he owed it to the world to change his approach to life a little. Besides, he was discovering, as he worked his internship in physical therapy, that he liked helping people. He enjoyed it. He was still a selfish bastard, but he selfishly got off on helping people, and that carried over, even into the CARES lobby when you were waiting to see how your HIV drug therapy was working.
He got the kid a paper cup of water and said, “Kid, you wanna come outside? I know it's cold, but I'm falling asleep in here.” The kid's relief had color, taste, and smell. He looked up at the still-pretty, middle-aged woman sitting in the middle, reading a cooking magazine like it was homework, and said, “Mom, I'm gonna step outside, 'kay? It'll be another fifteen minutes, right?”
The woman pursed her lips. “Collin, we can't be late for this….” The kid closed his eyes and nodded. “Five minutes, Mom. I swear.
Just… just….” He swallowed again. “Just let me get some air, 'kay?” The woman nodded. “That's fine, baby. Just don't run away.” She said it like it was a real possibility.
Collin grimaced and walked back to her, kissing her on the cheek and showing honest affection. Jeff couldn't help it—he heard what the boy said. “I've put you through enough, Mom. I just want some air, I promise.”
They got outside, and Jeff figured he'd take a couple of chances.
This kid had five minutes to get his head together, and he obviously wanted Jeff's help.
“Are you as gay as you look?” the kid asked, and Jeff had to laugh.
He thought
he
could be tactless.
“Is there any way to be
not
as gay as I look?” he asked, honestly curious, and the kid laughed a little himself. Jeff was wearing jeans— tight, tight jeans, because he didn't have any other kind, and if he had to do an hour of sit-ups a morning, he was going to keep fitting into those damned skinny jeans no matter
what
the drug cocktail did to his body. He was wearing a V-necked, faux-cashmere sweater in turquoise blue and bright, shiny leather loafers with pretty tassels, because he
liked
them, dammit, and he was gay, and gayness had its privileges. The kid laughed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes as they got to the outside wall. Jeff almost pointed out that the no smoking ban extended around the perimeter of the building and then figured that it was, perhaps, the last thing the kid needed to hear. Besides, Jeff promised himself one a day, and it looked like he'd get his early this day. “These are bad for you,” he pointed out gently, taking the second to last one from the pack. Camel, unfiltered. He shook his head. Figured.
This would have to be two days worth of smoke—he hoped the kid made this good.
Collin grunted, took the last one, and crumpled the empty pack in his hand. “I know. I told my mom I'd smoke one a day, you know? That way I could keep my will to live.”
Collin held out a lighter, and Jeff puffed appreciatively and then stepped back and leaned against the wall. Collin lit his own and Jeff sighed again, exhaling smoke. Ah… unfiltered nicotine. It was like eating real chocolate mousse when you'd been eating the kind that was actually non-fat yogurt for a couple of months.
“I know what you mean,” he said, enjoying the rush. “Sometimes, it's the little shit that gets you out of bed in the morning.”
The kid nodded. “You know, last month, I had to tell everyone I'd ever slept with or kissed or given head to or gotten a blow-job from that I was positive and they needed to get tested. I ran away first.” Jeff caught his breath with the simplicity of that. Who wouldn't want to run away before he had to do that? “What made you come back?”
Collin took a deep drag of his cigarette, his cheeks hollowing and his high cheekbones standing out in relief. He looked suddenly old in that moment, old and hard and dangerous, and Jeff thought that if he'd never met Kevin, this kid would have rung his bell but good, dirty-oldman shame or no.
“My mom. All the shit I put her through? Man, if she could hug me and call me her boy after all of that….” He shook his head. “If she could do that, the least I could do is ball the fuck up, right?”
Jeff nodded. He liked this kid. Brave, responsible—but with that core of bad boy that had made Kevin's wicked eyes in that jarhead uniform oh-so-irresistible. But Jeff's raw and bleeding heartstrings weren't what was at issue here.
“How was it?” Jeff asked softly. That was really what the kid had wanted to talk about, wasn't it? Why else pick an obviously gay man to confide in?
“It sucked,” Collin whispered, shaky on the exhale this time. “We were all so tight, yanno? All the queer kids, fucking each other silly because we could. It… we just felt invincible. Like, we were only fucking each other, so where were we going to get AIDS, right?” Jeff didn't correct the fact that it was HIV in this stage and not AIDS. When you were what, seventeen? Eighteen? Whatever—you weren't going to appreciate the difference, and you sure as hell weren't going to appreciate the lecture.
“How bad?” Jeff asked softly.
Collin shrugged and looked away. “Well, none of them are talking to me now—you know. Like
I
was the only one fucking around, right?
And only two of, like, ten got tested, and they're positive, and their parents just… just took them out of school before graduation, like they were plutonium or something. And no one mentioned a thing—not a single fucking thing. It's like it doesn't exist.” Collin shook his head, clearly bewildered. “I mean,
fuck
. Some of those guys weren't out—they have
girlfriends
, and the girls are just walking around, not knowing that the guy giving it to them might be HIV because he felt like getting frisky in the bathroom or behind the gym after a dance or what-the-fuck-ever.
And I just….”
Jeff turned his head, and Collin made eye contact. “I'm just so fucking lonely, you know? My dad died when I was a kid, and my mom… she busted her ass so we could have a good life, and I just pissed it all away, and I don't want to even talk to her about it… about any of it… because I already put her through enough….”
Ah, damn. The kid had thought he was tough, hadn't he? He had— and now he was fighting to be tough, not to cry, to keep his chin square, and Jeff thought if he was any more goddamned tough, he'd blow apart like a pane of damaged glass. Collin sucked hard on his butt one more time and then ground it out under his waffle-stomper in the weed-filled fine gravel on the side of the brick building.
He took a few more breaths and then said, apologetically, “That's the end of the smoke, right? Time's up?”
Jeff followed suit with his own cigarette, although it was only half gone. “C'mere, baby,” he said softly, and opened his arms, and suddenly he had an armload of terrified teenager.
“You listen to me,” he whispered fiercely. “You talk to your mom, because she wants to know. She won't be able to help, but you'll feel better, okay? Just fucking talk to her. She drove you to the goddamned clinic and is making you take this like a man—she'll get it.” Collin's arms tightened convulsively around his shoulders, and Jeff could sense a strangled full-body sob. “You're one lucky kid, you know that? You got your mom. You got family. You be grateful to them, and you let them help you, you hear me?”
Collin nodded, and that pointy chin dug once into Jeff's shoulder, and then they could both hear his pocket buzz. His mom, Jeff thought, probably texting him because his appointment was up.
Collin backed away, and Jeff missed his warmth against the chill of the day almost immediately. “Thanks,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I mean, just some random stranger, dumping all over you….”
Jeff waved a hand. “No worries, baby. Go on in, your mom's gonna freak, 'kay?”
Collin nodded once, awkwardly, and backed up before hurrying away. Jeff watched him go, feeling his chest tighten and an absurd quiver to his chin. Oh, God. He wanted more than anything to call his mama and tell her everything.
But even if he did, it wouldn't solve a thing. He leaned his hands on his thighs and squatted heavily in the February fog, trying to get his bearings and shoulder the load he'd been given. He had a condo that he loved, with a gym and a pool, and a shit load of houseplants and a gifucking-normous cat named Constantine who insisted that if Jeff were not there to give him luvvies, the world
would
fall apart. He had a dinner a month with the Herbert Schindlers, and patients who had started leaving him thank-you cards, and a promising profession doing something it looked like he might love very-much-a-lot. He had a promising white cell count and a low-dose drug cocktail instead of a high-dose one, and if he had to do an extra zillion and a half sit-ups to keep his girlish figure, well, so-the-fuck-be-it.